Whatever you find out, please report back to us. I've asked 2 dealers for this and they cant answer my question. One even said that the transmission is different, I know that cant be true.

The dealer is correct. In order to get the paddle shifters you need to have the:
2TB-Sport automatic transmission with shift paddles option. It's not just hardware, it's different software, different shifter.

The electronics on this car are maddeningly complicated. I even tried to retrofit just the 2TB shifter, and was told the computer would reject it since it didn't have the right part number. This is just the shifter, it's the same damn thing!

The electronics on this car are maddeningly complicated. I even tried to retrofit just the 2TB shifter, and was told the computer would reject it since it didn't have the right part number. This is just the shifter, it's the same damn thing!

You were lied to.

I retrofitted the 2TB SAT Gear Shift only in 30 minutes, and no coding was even necessary.

The electronics on this car are maddeningly complicated. I even tried to retrofit just the 2TB shifter, and was told the computer would reject it since it didn't have the right part number. This is just the shifter, it's the same damn thing!

You were lied to.

I retrofitted the 2TB SAT Gear Shift only in 30 minutes, and no coding was even necessary.

One vital difference between the DIY and kit you linked to and E60LCI and F10/11 is that those kits are for the old "mechanical" shift lever with no ECU attached to the gear lever. The paddle shift is fairly easy to install on those cars as you can simply connect some wires from the retrofitted paddles to the +/- connectors on the gear lever. No coding etc. needed.

On the E60 LCI and F10/11 the gear lever is the new type that has it's own ECU and at least on the E60 needs coding to get the paddle shifters to work.

This thread has a fairly detailed discussion on this subject on the E60 LCI: